


Kokai'lar

by SpicaV



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Camping, F/M, Gen, Historical ruins, Vulcan, Vulcan Culture, Vulcan history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:34:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25250959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpicaV/pseuds/SpicaV
Summary: Kokai'lar, The Sisters. A very Human Liv and very Vulcan L'Del adjust to one another as family. Cultural misunderstandings, social adjustment, and Vulcan pre-Reform history are the front focus, while star-voyaging Liv and planet-bound L'Del compare and contrast the lives they have chosen. Companion to my story Gemini.
Relationships: Taurik/Original Female Character(s), Vorik (Star Trek) & Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 16





	1. Liv

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DoctorMarySue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorMarySue/gifts).



I.

The morning sky burned yet blue with the rise of dawn in the east and fading of night to the west. A few stars still glittered low to the horizon of the Kahr Basin, and silver xirahnah birds flitted, called to one another as they woke. 

Liv McMinn stretched as she stepped from the shuttle among the subdued morning murmurs of a few other passengers. Carried a white-petaled orchid plant in her hands. Vorik shouldered their shared duffel and kept a discreet hand on her waist as he steered her from the electric bus toward a dirt path, marked by a stone pillar carved with his sister-in-law’s family name. They had come to Vulcan for a rare alignment of opportunity; the  _ Enterprise-E _ was undergoing repairs at the spacedock and  _ Voyager _ had swung through the 40 Eridani system on its way to Starbase 2.

“So this is their house-house?”

Vorik smiled with his eyes and nodded at a low-roofed house tucked into a hillside crackling with dune-cedar and saltbush. “I shall never understand the Human propensity for calling a thing what it is—twice—to announce its legitimacy. Yes, that is L’Del’s house, and yes, my brother lives there when he is on-planet.”

“Ah, Hebraic doubling, Vorik-adun. If translated literally the book of Genesis says the trees ‘seeded seeds’ at one point. See? Precedence.” 

“You have a talent for arguing with semantics, Adun’a.”

“Linguist.” Liv touched her chest and smiled true for the first time that morning; among Vulcans whom she did not know she kept to subtler facial expressions. “And you are a worthy sparring partner.”

“Vulcan,” Vorik said, gesturing to his own chest. 

The packed dirt path looped from the main road, still half-shadowed with early dawn. Sunlight had hit the higher points of tilted beds above, remnants of an ancient salt dome anticline that had weathered away to an open bowl. The valley was fast losing its shadow and the sky tinted rust-orange with airborne dust. The haboob and sandstorm season was settling down. 

Three figures appeared from the house, made of native red stone and set into the hillside with a few panes of anti-UV glass dark within the walls. Taurik and L’Del, with their six-year-old daughter Talys apparently begging off from meeting her relatives. She pulled back and darted to stand by the solid front door like a sentinel dressed in bright purple robes. Like most Human children, Vulcan children tended to like their world colorful.

“I remember that, running to hide from people I didn’t know well.” Liv’s heart warmed with tenderness for the girl, who knew them well from subspace communication but had rarely seen them in person.

“Taurik and I did also, until we were seven or so. After that our parents knew to grab each one of us by the shoulders and just steer us around to meet people. My mother usually took me. She often stepped on my heels.”

Liv glanced at him sideways, thinking that Vorik’s relationship with his mother explained a lot of his former attraction to B’Elanna Torres. T’Sara, the few times that they had met, seemed a formidable woman. She was as kind as her sons but stalwart; once she made up her mind to do something her goals were always met. She had taken up a minor position on the V’Lua City Council and had begun a retreat program for refugees seeking to integrate into the Federation. For a woman belonging to a people who sought to master their emotions, T’Sara had great compassion for peoples whose emotions had been shattered by loss of autonomy or home.

She had also self-selected her own mate without the Clan Mother’s input. A man named Vir, widower, who taught the traditional Raalian pottery classes at the Kitau’kov Arts Academy. 

“D’V’Sakai.” Taurik and Vorik greeted each other in rare unison, only the first consonant buzzing against the other. They embraced one another in Starfleet fashion and parted to cross hands and palms in traditional Vulcan greeting between family. Expressions warm, telepathic joy sparking in their dark eyes. Taurik in deep green Vulcan robes, Vorik still in his high-collared Engineering black and gold. Two pips clipped to his collar.

L’Del, standing with a white ceramic pot balanced on one hip, looked down to the small, black-petal orchid, the blossoms trembling in sympathy with the beat of her heart and cool morning air in her lungs. 

“Good morning, Sister,” Liv said, keeping her voice low. Vulcans, she had learned, preferred the lower pitch of the Human verbal spectrum, which they often found shrill. She offered L’Del the black-glazed pot with white orchid blossoms. “Great minds think alike, apparently.”

“Taurik wished to give this to you,” L’Del said, trading black orchids for the white. “He says they are called Black Ink Nebula orchids.”

“And that is a White Crane,” Liv said, nodding at the interior of the oval-lobed flowers. “See the red spot and black freckles inside? The flower is the same color as the red-crowned crane from the continent of Asia.”

“Ko’kai,” Vorik and Taurik said, still in unison, as they approached their respective sisters-in-marriage. They gave one another a dry look before Vorik coughed and turned to look at the horizon and Taurik looked down at his fingernails in an effort to break the moment. 

“T,” Liv said, greeting Taurik irreverently. Smiled outright. “Thank you for the orchid.”

“You are welcome, Ko’kai. Thank you for the same.” He looked back and forth between the flowers and pots, black and white and white and black. “They look like a chessboard.”

“We planned that in advance,” Vorik said, taking his wife by the waist in a gesture of affection allowed only in the most intimate of circles. 

Family certainly counted, but Liv caught L’Del’s disapproving glance at his hand, so she drew away to walk arm in arm with her sister-in-law. This was her house, after all. Liv sometimes forgot how different it was to be a planet-bound person, accustomed to a narrower band of experience and association. Starfleet officers, enlisted, and other space travellers had the advantage of growing accustomed to almost constant change. Sometimes these changes were wondrous, some frightening, some deadly. After  _ Voyager’s _ exile in Delta Quadrant she found herself being tugged between desire to continue with her Starfleet career or settling on Earth or some sympathetic colony.    


That time would come, but not now. 

Talys greeted her with a tiny ta’al and grave expression, her greeting slipping with a tiny lisp. Her eyes fastened on the other thing that Liv carried: a small box made of dark Jaxan II mahogany and inlaid with chrysocolla of an almost electric blue.

“For you,” Liv said, handing it to her in order to return the ta’al. “Happy belated birthday, Talys-ko’kan.”

“Shaya tonat!” Talys, little girl after all, grabbed the box and squealed when she saw the variety of wrapped oracle chocolates within. 

“Just one, just one, _ just one, _ ” Taurik said, taking the box and confiscating a handful of the chocolates that she was trying to unwrap all at once. He managed to juggle the orchids, box, and chocolates with only mildly rumpled dignity.

Liv bit her lower lip, trying hard not to laugh. She had explained to Vorik many times that there was a “law of the inverse” in Human humor; the more dignified the subject the funnier it was to see them removed from that dignity. Vulcans were natural “comedy gold” for this concept. Taurik, usually sleek and well-possessed, now blew an exasperated sigh that ruffled his bangs as Talys grabbed three chocolates and scampered away to devour them in her room.

“Good try, Dad,” Liv said. 

“You are talented, v’Sakai. Not every man can be defeated by a six year old.” Vorik tilted his head in wonderment. 

“She will have you wrapped around her little finger in an hour flat, Uncle,” Taurik said mildly, passing the orchid to L’Del and rearranging the remaining chocolates back into Talys’s box. “Those chocolates are going to be her breakfast.”

L’Del stood with her head tilted to one side throughout this exchange, an almost dreamlike expression on her usually stoic face. Liv recognized this from her own experience as a linguist; her sister-in-law must have only recently reactivated her Universal Translator implant and was having to learn how to focus on the interior translation, rather than the schism between speech and mouth movement. It took some getting used to. She knew that L’Del had hers implanted only six years prior, when she and Taurik had lived at Mars Colony during the build of  _ Enterprise-E _ . 

Now the other woman pressed forward, welcoming her and Vorik into her home with formal phrases and gestures. “My home is yours, honored guests.”

“Nemaiyo. T’nash-vey adun’a, hi’nak.” Vorik held up his first two fingers in the ozh’esta, this touch formal and rigid, compared to how they usually embraced. 

Liv responded in kind, though her grey eyes hardened and annoyance jarred in minor key along their marriage Bond. 

My wife, attend; this was the part of Vulcan tradition that she loathed, this remnant of old ways that made women into little more than chattel. She had silently cheered for B’Elanna Torres when she heard that the other woman had selected herself as her own champion to fight Vorik during plak tow. Glorious and bloody, as Tom Paris had described her.

Vorik caught her memory as they stepped into the house, and a mix of his sorrow, embarrassment, and chagrin welled up around her. His glance was wounded in his otherwise impassive face, and she sent an apology through their telepathic link. 

_ Tradition for propriety’s sake, only for now, _ he Thought.  _ L’Del is more traditional than we are. _

_ I know, Vorik-my-Vorik. _

_ Coming home is sometimes an ill-fit. I still do not quite belong; the longer I am removed from Vulcan the harder it is to return. _

_ A common refrain among us star-wandering vagabonds. You are not alone. _

_ I am sorry about her. _ Here, his memory of B’Elanna Torres, snarling and pushing him away as he established a mating bond with her in Engineering. The alarming crack of his dislocating bones, coppery blood against his tongue.  _ I should have come to you. _

_ You could not. _ She responded with a memory of Ensign Gibson, her former fiancé, his handsome face twisted in wry dismissal, arrogance. _ I was in the middle of making a mistake of my own. _

Vorik’s mouth flickered with a smile as they dropped their paired fingers and stood in the stone-tile foyer of L’Del’s home. The house was of a Midcentury style, three centuries removed. The common room looped in an elongated half-circle, largely windowed and surrounded by a pergola-shaded platform that acted as a deck and sleeping porch during cooler months. The kitchen, old-fashioned with a central fire pit—now cold in late summer— sat in the hillside, lit with skylights and solar mirroring. Light grey walls, white-shaded lamps. Two hallways disappeared into shadow on either side, behind half-tied curtains of plum-colored cloth. Liv assumed these led to bedrooms, L’Del’s small recording studio, Taurik’s home office. 

A sunken lounge area sat in the middle of the common room, very Vulcan, and several sculptures of dune-cedar stood against the walls. Save for a woven wall hanging of an abstract ringed planet in blues and yellows and several of Talys’s bright-colored toys, the room looked almost monastic in its simplicity. 

Taurik led them down the hall to the left and paused to duck into Talys’s room. Though the pocket door slid back only a little, Liv could see a charming room lined with shelving containing holos of Taurik standing offworld, several ceramic pots overflowing with crayons, pens, paintbrushes. A pyramid of rolled papers in various tints and colors. He asked Talys to go to the kitchen and help with breakfast; Uncle and Aunt would be there soon. Talys, unseen past the cedar door, murmured an affirmative and asked for more chocolate.

“You two have incited insurrection in my own house,” Taurik said, taking them to a set of doors set into the northern hillside. The rest of the hall looped farther into the shadows and joined the other hall, making the house one long oval. “Your rooms. Please let me know if you need anything—”

A minor crash from Talys’s room echoed and the girl bawled in frustration. 

“Else.” Taurik almost rolled his eyes but caught himself, composed his emotions with a long breath, and turned on his heel with military precision to venture again into his daughter’s bedroom. A flutter of rapid speech, weaving in and out of two Vulcan dialects, echoed down the hall.

“Now we have done it.” Liv grinned and stepped into their room, already pulling at the blue collar of her Sciences uniform. The bedroom was also spare, with a wide bed covered in an orange-red blanket, several of Bal’s large ceramic pots in varying shades of grey and rust-red, the walls whitewashed with a shimmering paint that caught the light from two privacy-screened skylights. A door leading to an old-fashioned bathing room, lined entirely in stone tile with a steel basin large enough to kneel in, stood half ajar. The rooms smelled of incense, something dusky and sensual. 

Vorik likewise changed into civilian clothing, slacks and a green-black tunic embroidered with subtle silver thread along the hem. He caught at Liv’s bare waist as she stepped into a dress of lavender-grey linen, long and modestly cut, save for a keyhole seam that dipped between her shoulder blades. Desire burned between them; morning was usually the time they had sex, and the Pavlovian response almost overwhelmed the need for propriety. They managed to control themselves and Vorik buttoned the opalescent toggle at the nape of Liv’s neck, helped her pin up her hair. He thought of several delicious things they could do with each other that evening, nuzzling into Liv’s neck as he shared the images in their Bond. 

“Mm, that second one,” she said, standing on tiptoe to whisper into his ear. She kissed his chin and jaw where B’Elanna had struck him with the flat of her palm. Rewiring the association, she called it.

Breakfast was silent in the Vulcan custom, but preparation—usually solely provided by guests but an exception was made here because of the hour—was a time of speaking, sharing, and occasionally smiling with one’s eyes. Vorik and Taurik spoke while they braided dough for baking. Liv cut melon and drizzled imported honey, pulled herbs that reminded her of mint and thyme, ground powder similar to nutmeg. L’Del had evidently dispensed with the tradition that food must not be touched while prepared or consumed; something that Liv was sure Taurik had a hand in. 

“Heh, ‘hand,’” she murmured to herself as she picked the serving bowl up and carried it to the table. 

“What about your hand?” Talys asked. Already nibbling at a roll and her cheek smeared with a yellow jam. 

“Nothing, Talys-pea. Just a horrible pun that I thought of.”

“You were chastising yourself, Ko’kuik—I mean, Aunt?”

“Something like that, yes.”

Silence fell after L’Del spoke a traditional blessing and additional welcome. That did not preclude telepathic silence, as Vorik almost immediately began relaying family gossip to Liv the moment everyone’s plates were full: his sister Shara’s firstborn would be a daughter, Bal had a new commission from a Bajoran monastery, Vir had difficulty adjusting to his new children. Evidently Taurik and L’Del were doing the same, judging by the microexpressions that flitted between them. There was a minor sort of tension here that Liv could read. Twice Taurik glanced at her and Talys, and once Vorik exchanged a sharp glance with his twin while L’Del gazed out the window with an inscrutable expression. 

_??? _ she asked along their Bond.

_ Later, my Liv. Nothing to worry over. L’Del is unaccustomed to offworld guests.  _ And here an impression of windows in walls where they shouldn’t be, time in an analog clock advancing too quickly, discordant musical notes. A marriage bed with only half of the covers pulled back. Ah. This was something she understood, a lament that she had heard from planet- or starbase-bound spouses, the misalignment of intimacy, the long stretches of marital lack. How had Karen Blixen put it? Those who adventured got to test their bravery and prowess; those who remained home had to see how long they could do without. 

She wished they could speak around the table, but it would have to wait. She thought of another of Blixen’s writings: “A visitor is a friend, he brings news, good or bad, which is bread to the hungry minds in lonely places.” 

That bread would have to wait for a better time. She hoped her sister would like the taste.


	2. L'Del

II.

“Over, under, around and through,” Liv knelt and tied Talys’s shoe, which was laced to allow adjustment of the overarching structure. She grew so quickly.

Talys mouthed the singsong expression and watched Liv’s fingers move. Tried it herself on the other bright orange-and-purple boot. At six years old she had mastered rudimentary mathematics and was on the upper-advanced level for the children’s cedar flute, but there were some places in which she lacked. L’Del believed it obstinance; Talys seemed suddenly keen to learn how to tie her boots, now that her Human aunt was visiting. The bow she produced was loose, but Liv nudged and pulled it taut with subdued praise.

“You packed the second tent?” 

“Yes. You packed the tricorder?”

“Yes. Liv borrowed one from Sciences.”

L’Del listened to her husband and brother-in-law going over the final preparations of their backpacking supplies. They knelt on either side of her as they zipped and sealed and rifled through pockets. The stereo effect of their twin voices unnerved her, so she moved away to help Talys shoulder the daypack that held an extra water bottle, emergency comm beacon, sketchbook supplies, and two pairs of her clothes. The adults would carry all of the necessary supplies, plus food and water. 

Liv packed several medications for high desert travel on a world where she was not native; standard Starfleet issue, she had explained when she saw L’Del looking. She actually had an implant that would automatically help her with breathing and differences in gravity. These were supplements in case the technology failed.

The brothers both wore desert soft suits that accentuated their slender frames: dark clinging trousers and loose tunics in rust-red and dusky green. Vorik wore his sleeveless, with the removed fabric rolled into his pack. Liv wore deep blue linen shorts and a breezy sage green blouse that would protect her Scottish complexion from Nevasa’s strong light. Another extra precaution; she had already taken a course of medicine that would give her a temporary boost of UV resistance in her own skin. 

L’Del thought it odd; though Vulcan skins lightened and darkened with sun exposure they neither burned nor “crisped” as the Human woman said.

They took a pre-dawn shuttle northwest from ShiKahr to the Gerret Hills and stepped off in the village of Pret. Bells rang the morning hour at the midwife academy, and a few blue lara birds darted for the horizon. The trail leading into the mountains was steep at first, then followed a wash down into the narrow Haj’lokai Basin, which contained a river and pre-Reformation ruins dating back approximately 8,750 years. An older Vulcan woman nodded in greeting at them as they stood before the informational kiosk and asked where they were headed. 

“The Ruins of Kolar,” Taurik said, trying to reign in little Talys, who was tugging on her father’s thumbs with great impatience. 

“A fair destination,” the woman said. “My name is T’Vell. When you return you are welcome at the Spring of M’Sharis. Journey well.”

Here she smiled a tiny archaic smile at Liv, nodded, and went on her way, the golden morning light gleaming in her silver braids. She moved off with sedate grace toward the midwife academy, her green robes marking her as one of the disciples of healing herbs. 

“Neat place,” Liv said mildly, looking around at the soaring sandstone cliffs and the sky rosy at dawn.

L’Del frowned from behind her husband’s shoulder. “Neat place” was one of the irreverent, pointless things that Humans seemed to say that were inadequate for the time and setting. She adjusted her pack and waistband of her soft blue hiking dress and followed her group into the canyon.

They followed a wash that looped and wound at the base of cedar hills, a path chosen both for ease and to spare the cryptobiotic crust that allowed deserts to retain moisture and nutrients even in the driest months. Talys, over-excited, often scampered ahead and visibly chaffed when called back by her parents. Vorik offered to take his niece farther along the trail and help her boulder while the rest of their group caught up; Aunt Liv had to go slow for a while to make sure her medicine was working to help her breathe. Talys accepted, and the two jogged off, their voices echoing around the bend.

“Have you finished your thesis on the Ocampan vernacular systems?” Taurik asked Liv as they drew into an area of ancient cedars, the trunks thick and branches creaking. Cool shadows pooled around them and made it easier to concentrate on something other than covering ground and the growing heat.

“Yes, but I wish I still had Kes to clarify some of the excerpts on time passage,” Liv said, pausing as she hopped down from the higher streambed to a lower one. Dry cascades, which must look spectacular in flood. “She perceived time a little differently than we do.”

L’Del wondered if her sister-in-law remembered that Vulcans perceived time differently than Humans. Still, she must make an effort; Taurik and Vorik were becoming as close as they once had been, though the relationship was changed. She wanted to encourage this relationship.

“You are fortunate you were so far removed from the rigors of the usual Starfleet protocols,” L’Del said to Liv. “Reading your thesis on the commonality of root words between the far-separated Minna and Muut’a systems in Delta Quadrant was enlightening. Indeed, the myriad of new language and literary translations coming from the Delta are intriguing. I most enjoyed Commander Tuvok’s lecture series on Talaxian solicitude and its effect on telepathic species. Did you know him well?”

“No, I never got to know Tuvok beyond his role as my commander. He takes his Vulcaning far too seriously,” Liv said, ducking under the dune-cedar branch at the top of another dry fall.

“What about your Humaning?” Taurik asked, standing back to let Liv scramble down between two sandstone boulders the color of cold ash. 

“Oh, I only dabble.” Liv hopped down the rest of the way, coming down to a kneeling position to allow the sand to absorb her fall. 

As the Human uncurled from the drop she and Taurik exchanged a glance of amusement and affection that left L’Del staring at her soft boots and shielding her thoughts in the marriage Bond. Her husband and this Human were far too alike for her comfort. Worse, Liv’s husband Vorik was so alike her own husband in voice and body that her sister-in-law possessed intimate knowledge that L’Del had considered solely her own. Liv knew what Taurik would look like naked because Vorik looked the same, save for a birthmark over the small of his back and diminished burn scars from the Dominion War. L’Del remained staring at her boots until she felt Taurik’s soft inquiry through their Bond. 

_??? adun’a? _

_ tired, my husband _

He watched L’Del as Liv hiked on ahead. Held her eyes with his own. There was fondness there, deep love, the unguarded softness of expression reserved for a beloved spouse and a gentle smile over his mouth that he wore only for her. Different from the diplomatic smile that he used for his Human friends, which seemed so exaggerated to L’Del that it seemed like a rictus of pain, rather than expression of amusement. She felt his love and desire trace along their mind-link. Drew close to him, nuzzled his neck as their fingers found one anothers in a sensual ozh’esta.

How could she doubt her husband? 

It was the Human woman. L’Del was unsure if she could trust her; her species experienced emotions and impulses ran so close beneath the surface and yet were not as strong and driving as the emotions that Vulcans had mastered. Humans seemed vessels of childish impulse.

Silence followed as they hiked the rest of the wash, passing steep hills of heaped sandstone cobbles, poorly sorted, that indicated ancient river flow. The hills above were of tawny and dun-colored stone that supported cedars, llal’en trees, and svai-tor trillek, a yucca-like cactus with peppery yellow blossoms. The wash itself carved through a layer of cooler-colored rock. 

Liv knelt to collect pebbles of bright red chert that mixed among the ash and green-greys of the wash bottom. Taurik began scooping them up as well, passing her a large chert nodule that he had pried up with the edge of his boot. 

“Nemaiyo,” she said. Dialect of Raal, end of her diphthong caught with a rasp in her throat in a proper application of the accent.

Talys’s clear giggle and Vorik’s encouraging murmurs began to reach them through the trees, and as they drew around a final bend the pair was revealed. Vorik was spotting Talys as she scrambled up an arret of stone, her little limbs spidering and sure over the rock. She reached for a juggy hold as Vorik held his hands out below her, tracing her movements without touching her, ready to catch her if she fell. Out here, among the mountainous desert washes and without the scrutiny of Starfleet personnel or the Vulcan public, he appeared relaxed and at ease, almost happy. 

The little girl reached whatever goal she had set for herself and began the strenuous business of downclimbing. Tongue augured into the corner of her mouth, dark eyes focused. Her uncle backed away as she came down and backed away entirely for the last 1.5-meter drop. 

“I completed it,” Talys said, full of self-satisfaction as she hopped down into a spray of grey sand. Almost strutted to claim her backpack and water bottle from where she had left them by a froth of gahv bushes. 

“What is the name of your route?” Taurik asked, kneeling to take his daughter onto his shoulders. He grasped her by her ankles as they began to move on. 

“Aunt Liv, 5.6,” Talys said, arching one eyebrow and looking over to where her aunt walked.

“I am honored,” Liv said, hooking her thumbs into the straps of her own pack as she kept pace. “Thank you, Talys-pea.”

Vorik drew close to his wife as they walked, silent communication along their Bond apparent because of her changing expression. Her eyebrows and mouth flicked into expressions of amusement, her grey eyes sliding over to his in a teasing manner, and twice she chuckled outright. Her eyes watered, a side-effect of telepathic communication common to the Human species, which had little to no natural psi-ability. 

“This is the place I was thinking of,” Taurik said, walking up a rise and into a natural bight within the sandstone cliffs. Its position in the canyon meant that their camp would be in shade for most of the day, only a trace of sunlight falling in the entrance for mornings and evenings. The air within the bight was cooled by a natural seep of water one third of the way up the cliff. Green moss and v’mij fronds clung there, and water pattered off of them into a thin pool of water below. “The ground level here is high up enough that the wash will not be a danger. Look.”

He nodded to a space in the sand that had been cleared of stones and vegetation. A fire-ring of soil-covered char sat in the middle, and a steel box with camp registry and emergency beacon sat tucked in the shade of a large boulder. 

“It’s beautiful,” Liv said, unshouldering her pack and stretching. A bib of sweat darkened the green shirt between her breasts and striped down over her spine where the pack had carried. “Reminds me of near Canyonlands, down in Moonflower Canyon.”

“Utah?” Taurik asked, helping Talys down and out of her shoes so she could splash barefoot in the shallow pool.

“Yes. You ever been?”

“Once, when Vorik and I were children.”

“My Aunt Billie has a house in Moab. She is what some call a ‘free spirit.’ Her wife Ana is a member of the Diné tribe, the Navajo. They hold wheel pottery and writing retreats for people who are in therapy for surviving abuse. Held some recently for people who survived attacks by the Borg.” Liv’s face fell into shadow as her hair tumbled from her bun. Invoking the Borg out here in the clean expanse of wild desert seemed like a sin. 

Vorik already had their tent laid out and set it up with ease of long practice. He and Liv dragged it to one side of the boulder and staked it to the ground, the pings of hammer on stake ringing against the stone bight and joining the sound of Talys singing to herself a nonsense child’s song about “masu katra masu katra, masuuuuu ash’yaidar.”

L’Del helped Taurik set their tent up and unfurl the colorful bedrolls with traditional floral patterns printed over them. In previous centuries, before water systems were shared planetwide, ornamental flower gardens were rare. Only the most wealthy of the Clans could have them, and as a response poorer weavers had made bed linens and rugs for those who were not so fortunate. They wove images of native flowers and vines, eventually working into fanciful blossoms that never existed, save for in fiberworks. The bedrolls that her family used for camping were a reference to this time; Taurik’s was printed with stylized green leaves, hers with violet blossoms with golden centers, Talys’s of garnet-red v’minnet vines. She had gifted Vorik a dark-orange bedroll with a scatter of white citrus-like flowers, and Liv had received one of turquoise green and blue ripple marks. 

“Rest with me, Ashaya,” Taurik said, stretching out on his side and drawing L’Del down to him. 

She tumbled gladly and allowed herself to smile, here in this cocoon of privacy with the shadows cool about them. Wished that they could make love, here, now, but Talys was returning to camp, judging by the sound of her voice. L'Del caressed Taurik’s body, running the flat of her palm down his long thigh, cupping his buttocks, dipping her hand under his tunic to run her fingertips up his spine.

“Later,” she whispered into his ear. Kissed him when he smiled.


	3. Liv II

III.

“Please give us some privacy, Water-foot,” Liv said, smiling at her niece from where she and Vorik lay on their bedrolls. Talys, who had flapped the tent open with a dramatic swing of her small arm, grinned like an imp and flopped the canvas door back into place. Vorik, who was laying with his shirt off and trying to get his wife to do the same, smiled and traced his fingers over her ribs as she turned to him. “We really need a lock on that thing, my fine fellow.”

“There is one. Here.” Vorik rolled gracefully to the door, thumbed a circle of rubber that squeaked with an electronic pip, and the seams of the door sealed tight. “Though it looks like a traditional wall tent it is in fact a reproduction. Not as heavy, either. The historical materials were trillek-bark canvas and dune-cedar poles. This is made of imported linen weave and dura-aluminum.”

“It reminds me of a yurt,” Liv said, humoring her husband and peeling off her shirt and bra. He crawled to her, took her to the bedroll, kissed the pale skin of her breasts. Parted her legs with the press of his knee. “We used to stay in one when I was young, down by the Bears Ears Monument… ah.”

Outside, L’Del called in her ShiKahr dialect for Talys to leave her uncle and aunt’s tent alone, come along, daughter, Father and I are taking you to the creek.

Forty minutes later she and Vorik lay in the cool shade of their tent and listened to the call of lara birds in the trees above. He lay with his head on her belly, tracing his fingertips over her thigh, down into the hollow between her legs, back up again to the other thigh.

“Stop that,” she said, kindly, giving him a swat on one shoulder. “We’ll need to go again if you don’t.”

“That would not be unpleasant,” he said, pushing himself up onto one elbow and gazing at the tumble of her reddish blonde hair. Moved to lay over her, resting his ear against her chest to hear the languid heartbeat. She stroked his neck and shoulders, traced her fingertips over his temple and the point of his ear. He sighed. “I hope it will be like this.” 

She shifted to hug his head as best she could in the awkward sprawl of post-coital limbs. Cradled him with her legs. She knew what Vorik meant by “it.” Pon farr, his second, loomed some time in the scope of the year. Since his first had ended in humiliation and combat, its approach sat heavily in his heart and mind. This time, mating was the only option.

Trepidation mixed with her own curiosity; she had wondered what pon farr would be like even before she knew Vorik well, for the rumor and hearsay circulated freely among Starfleet vessels had roared to a fiery crucible aboard  _ Voyager _ . Her crew had been so confined and intimate with one another, so far removed from home. Some, who had overheard the initial confrontation between Vorik and B’Elanna Torres said that he had whimpered and clawed like a wounded animal. Some, who had encountered him during his walk of humiliation from Sickbay to his quarters, had said that he growled like a chainsaw when the doors didn’t open fast enough for his liking. Everything else that had been said had been stitched together from Vorik’s and B’Elanna’s interactions well after The Incident. And from Tom Paris’s mediations, from Tuvok and Janeways’s stern orders. 

Vorik’s reputation onboard  _ Voyager _ had taken a hard blow, with B’Elanna and many others viewing him as dangerous, while Tom Paris and many more others exhibited compassionate understanding of differences between biology and culture in a diverse crew.

Her husband, she knew, still felt anguished about the whole affair years later. Even if his reputation was once again sterling, even if B’Elanna Torres herself had backed his advancement to Assistant Chief Engineer aboard the refitted  _ Voyager _ . That sense of humiliation led Liv to understand that whatever pon farr was, it was not just about sex and reproduction but a fundamental stripping of self, an exposure of body and soul down to their raw, aching, vulnerable roots. 

“Whatever it is, we shall be in it together,” she said, looking at him with kindness as he rose to sit beside her. Covered her with a thin turquoise shawl that she had brought for additional shade on the trail. 

“That is what I fear,” Vorik said. He gathered his clothes, lay back under the low ceiling to fasten his trousers. “I fear I shall hurt you without meaning to.”

She pulled her own clothes on, pushed his hands away after he gave one last playful caress of her naked waist. Draped the shawl over her shoulders. “You have all of my permission. I know what I was saying yes to when we married, Adun.” 

Vorik nodded, lying on his back and drawing his forearm over his eyes. The weight and darkness calmed him. 

Liv kissed him on the forehead, just over his third eye, and pushed out of the tent to give Vorik time to pull himself together. Not quite meditation. He always needed a short time to himself after sex. Through the Bond she could sense his melancholy and trepidation, even as he had made that last sweet caress of her skin. She wondered idly if Taurik felt the same after lovemaking, but L’Del did not seem like one to volunteer such intimate information of her marriage, and she would never in a thousand millennia think of asking her brother-in-law outright. 

She and Taurik had taken a liking to one another the moment they met, though it was not the Vulcan legend of shan'hal'lak, The Engulfment, of love-at-first-sight. Rather, it was a bond of friends who understood in shorthand what it was to leave one’s home and be a member of Starfleet, to embrace risk, to explore strange new worlds. She had had the added advantage of knowing Taurik through Vorik, who had spoken of him often and shared his love of his brother through the melds that had become deeper and more intimate with their time in the Delta Quadrant. Taurik, for his part, had taken refuge in her as a buffer against the strangeness of his brother’s homecoming. She had tried to serve as this when she could, and knew that he had been grateful for it. 

The twin brothers  _ felt _ fundamentally different to her. She could not mistake Vorik for Taurik or vice versa, for the Kai’ka bond between her and her husband was as obvious as sunlight to her. 

Vorik’s spiritual vibration in her mind tasted of citrus fruit; the light of day and sweetly aching, post-lovemaking mornings; the taste of copper blood and the sour-salt tang of his skin. He felt like a caress of fingertips tracing down her spine, a summer wind at dusk, a soft whisper of “adun’a” against the nape of her neck. He was the color of sunlight through green leaves. Taurik, on the other hand, tasted of nothing. Smelled like cedar, something akin to vanilla, was deep indigo blue with sparks of gold. He was the reach of water on a tidal flat at night. 

She followed the narrow sand trail from camp to pool.

The smell of water and damp, growing things reached from the pool at the base of the sandstone cliffs, red and tawny, a violet-blue sheen of desert manganese glowing on the upper surfaces. Liv hopped up onto a smooth boulder that looked out over the shallow, mirror-like pond. It stood only half a meter deep at its lowest points, and a few dark water bugs swam for boltholes under submerged stones when her wavering reflection danced across the water. A chkaria with dark, ruddy fur similar to a pine marten, ran like living water up one boulder, paused to observe Liv with its beady red eyes, then disappeared down into shadows. It had prominent fangs like the extinct Terran  _ Smilodon fatalis _ , but it was not dangerous to Vulcans and Humans. Several birds sang overhead. Something piercing and sweet.

Vorik climbed up beside her after three quarters of an hour, the balanced vibrations along their Bond indicating that he had actually meditated and found his center within the Disciplines. She had meditated in her own way, keeping a present mind and watching the reflections of cliffs on water. 

The advantage of a Kai’ka bond was that words need not be spoken aloud; much of their communication was focused within, impressionistic, and yet somehow deeper than verbal and physical communication combined. Vorik had explained to her that this is what he felt for all of his fellow Vulcans, a planetwide—and galaxywide—link called a’Dhah in his Raalian dialect. There were other names across the planet for this phenomenon that Vulcans relied on but that Humans almost completely lacked. 

Their marriage Bond simply made this resonance for a certain individual focused, pleasurable, a feeling of being enveloped, warm, and safe. 

For their marriage, at least. Liv noticed tension on L’Del’s mannerisms around her and a subtle mate-guarding posturing whenever she and Taurik spent more than a moment together. Liv most likely would not have noticed this if she hadn’t seen the same mannerisms in B’Elanna Torres once she and Tom Paris were mated. There had been a period of two or so months in which the Chief Engineer’s Klingon instincts had vibrated in disharmony with Tom’s gregarious, open, and friendly spirit, and she would insinuate herself into group conversations where Tom was speaking to  _ any _ unattached woman. 

How the couple later resolved this she did not know; the  _ Voyager _ rumor mill went only so far, and some questions were better left unanswered. Seven had hypothesized it had something to do with their loud vocalizations during sexual congress. 

Vorik’s amusement trembled along the Bond as he caught her memory, though his expression remained serene. The chkaria had come out of its hiding spot to hunt along the edge of the pond, and he watched it with interest as it darted into the water and came out with some sort of curled-up animal that looked uncannily like a trilobite. The chkaria killed it with a loud crunch and wrench of its head. 

“Yum,” Liv whispered. 

“Maybe she will share with you.” 

“Only if I can eat the eyes, Adun. Should we catch up with Taurik and L’Del? Something about a creek?”

He rose and pulled her up after him, holding her hand in Terran fashion as they walked down the dry wash to the creek, a small, unnamed tributary to the larger Vitush-kov River down the plateau. The water ran swift and dusky green in the shadows beneath overhanging makara trees. 

Talys lay out sound asleep on a yellow blanket, her long legs covered to the knee in sand and mud, a chalky smudge marking her round cheek. The bright blue swimsuit she wore featured a comic book character named Sacred Artemis, popular among children on Mars Colony, where she had been born. She looked a lot like her father in her repose, but the voice that came out of her mouth when awake was L’Del’s in exact miniature. 

Taurik stood to his waist mid-current, while L’Del picked her way along the far shore in water up to her ankles. She resembled a blue heron in her light blue dress, her hand cupping what looked like a water-carved fragment of tuff stone. She noticed them as Vorik stripped off his tunic and appraised her husband’s brother with a momentary expression of startlement.

Liv smiled to herself behind the curtain-fall of her hair as she stepped from her clothes to reveal her Starfleet-issue black swimsuit. One-piece, to account for the traditional Vulcan sense of modesty that L’Del seemed to observe, even out here in the back of the beyond. 

She knew the cause of L’Del’s startlement; while on Deep Space 9 she, Vorik, Taurik, Aisha, and Sam had gone to the hot springs on Bajor and swum in the caldera-warmed Kairah River. Taurik and Vorik’s identical nature went from their heads down to their feet; save for the small green birthmark in the shape of a chevron on Taurik’s lower back she had been unable to tell them apart at a casual glance. Then her sense of her husband through the Bond set in, and they were as different as night and day.

“How is it?” She asked as she picked her way into the stream. The rocky shore gave way to fine-grained sand in the pool, where a waterfall and shoal slowed the current enough to allow for swimming. 

“Freezing,” Vorik said, though apparently they differed in definition of the word; the water felt heavenly to her. She launched into a skimming dive and came up next to her husband’s legs with her hair sleek and eyes glinting with mischievous glee. She splashed him and he flinched back, shivering, sliced a slap of water at her with the side of his hand that caught her in the face.

The ensuing, short-lived splash fight was over in a matter of moments, though long enough for Taurik to withdraw to the shore. Smile warm in his eyes as he scrubbed at his long limbs with a towel. Liv thought he looked happier than he had been two years prior, soon after  _ Voyager’s _ return. His face had filled out a bit. He did not look so gaunt and his stride was once again smooth. A good thing, for Vorik had expressed his alarm and love for him to her in the privacy of their bedroom in V’Lua. The brothers resembled one another again. 

She swam for a while and then helped Vorik from the creek, their movements quiet to allow Talys the full extent of her nap. They had walked 9.8 kilometers, after all. As Vorik rubbed his towel over her legs she caught the gaze of L’Del, who was watching them with a haughty, disapproving expression. Apparently even a remote, nameless creek was public in her eyes and subject to a certain amount of propriety.

Liv nodded at her sister-in-law in what she hoped was a friendly and subdued manner. She had compassion for L’Del, homebound by choice and preference with a spacefaring spouse; it had been an adjustment for Aisha Bilal, when Sam Lavelle went back to the  _ Enterprise-E _ and she had remained at Uluru Starbase as a Deck Engineer to raise baby Jackson. 

The change in Starfleet ships after the Dominion War had been difficult for many; families were no longer welcome aboard starships unless in port, which had required rearrangement of thousands of careers of Starfleet officers. Aisha had returned to the  _ Enterprise-E  _ after Jackson’s death and would soon again have to make the choice of where to live. Sam had offered to be the one to remain stationary, this time.

Vorik and Taurik were sitting on the broad yellow blanket and conversing in their rapid Raalian dialect from which she could understand two out of every three words. When spoken slowly, the dialect was clear to her, but she still lacked the rapid-fire dexterity and active understanding of a native speaker. She noticed L’Del sitting near her daughter with an expression similar to Liv’s, trying to understand, unable to fully follow. 

Pleasure and love from Vorik sang along her Bond. Liv lay back next to Talys’s little legs with a sigh and closed her eyes, letting the language wash over her like water.


	4. L'Del II

VI.

The ruins soared into the dusky evening, the ancient halls having been carved from living rock, much like Petra Raqmu, of Jordan, Earth. But whereas the buildings and monuments of Petra were carved into cliff sides, the ruins of Zer’hir were free-standing and thus had suffered extensive weathering. What remained were the most stalwart of the buildings: the circular Shi’fitor amphitheatre, the well-house and bathhouse, and, tellingly, the former brothel quarter.

A courtyard, once paved with red sandstone and now buckled and heaped with debris, opened up at the mouth of a narrow street, which L’Del used to lead Liv into the ruins. Low walls of houses and shop stalls remained here. A fount of flora grew where the ancient well had once marked the boundary of the housing zone, their roots burrowing deep to reach the water that still flowed underneath in a freshwater seep. 

L’Del and Liv wandered as Taurik, Vorik, and Talys took turns practicing their climbing on several marked routes that wound above the western quarter. Like their camp, the city of Zer’hir had been built within a bight of cliffs, only larger and with a natural amphitheater of stone set deep in the southern wall. The two women could see their family as they walked, Taurik rappelling off of the route and leaving the trad cams in place, Talys ascending later on top rope, Vorik eventually following and cleaning the gear. 

“Did your ancestors come from this place?” Liv asked, kneeling to examine traces of what had once been a painted mural of vines and unknown figures. All that remained were a few leaves, thorns, and discorporated feet in sandals. 

“Some ancestors,” L’Del said, admiring the paint colors, which remained vibrant where they were sheltered by fallen stones. “Some of my father’s Clan, long ago. We removed to ShiKahr well before Surak. The climate changed and wells went dry.”

“Like the Pueblo from Chaco Canyon.” Liv rose and wandered through an arch that marked the end of the market quarter. 

The architecture changed the closer they drew to the sandstone amphitheater, which had been carved along its low, wide arch to create a proscenium of columns, twining vines, and fearsome deities. The lines here were angular, more ancient. Well into the pre-Reform era, when all of Vulcan was consuming itself in emotion, war, skirmish, rape, rage, poisoning, retaliation, a fearsome form of eugenics through forced marriage, murder with blade and cudgel and knife and mind-rape. This was a place of ghosts, not of the wispy, wraithlike variety but ghosts born of brutal memory, shame, violation. 

L’Del followed behind, noting several family names that had been chiseled into the doorway arch. None were familiar, which brought her a measure of relief that the brutalities that had taken place here were not close by association. 

The amphitheatre rose above them reflecting heat from the burn of midday. Later afternoon through dusk was always the best time to explore, after the siesta and dinner hours when the world cooled. Liv carried a tricorder set to sense hazardous flora and fauna of the area, such as the venomous le-matya. Every now and then something intrigued her enough to pull the tricorder from its holster: a remnant of mural paint, a doorway set with semi-precious onyx stones, a fragment of pottery or thick, primitive glass. At one point she knelt and began swiping at a drift of rust-red sand and unearthed an empty plak’kov pendant, the color of oxidation revealing it to be made of silver.

“Beauty,” she said, laying the pendant in her palm for L’Del to see. 

The circle of engraved metal had once contained a fragment of blood-stone, which was now missing. L’Del explained its import with her expression and coldness of voice revealing her feelings more than she knew. “This was a souvenir once sold in the market quarter; Zer’hir had been a place renowned for its public executions. After an execution of note the porous tuff quarried north of here was brought and soaked in a vat of blood from the victim. The stone took on the color to become a plak’kov. When the tuff was thoroughly dyed it was polished and set into these pendants.”

“How very Ferengi,” Liv said, darkly amused. “We did the same on earth. Souvenir hangman’s ropes, gallows fragments, bullets dug out of a death-car with penknives. Sometimes locks of hair. Barbaric, weren’t we?” She placed the pendant back into the damp earth and began burying it in place.

“You are not going to keep it? They are valuable artifacts,” L’Del asked, startled. 

“No. It doesn’t belong to me.” Liv paused with the pendant half-buried again, dusted her hand carefully on one hip.

“It belongs to no one.”

“True, but it is not for a Kohmihn to take.” Liv used the Vulcan word for Human with an inflection that indicated that it had been used as an insult against her. “If you want I can dig it up again and you can take it home.”

L’Del considered, glanced up at the amphitheatre ahead. “No. Perhaps it is wise to leave it in its resting place. Zer’hir was a place of darkness.”

Liv nodded and pushed the rest of the sand back into the hole, leaving the pendant to the earth. She liberated her hair from its queue and shook the golden fall down. She had woven two small braids into the left side, and these clicked with small silver clips, wholesome souvenirs of Bajor.

A shout of “off-belay” echoed from one of their husbands, the voices too similar for either woman to tell; the rope leading up to the decent bolts was hidden by a jut of cliff. Talys’s eloquent cry of impatience followed. 

“Precocious,” Liv said, scanning a prak’it tree pod. Its flowering season was over. 

“My child?”

“Yes. I mean that as a compliment.”

L’Del thought of how mysterious Humans could be. What was an insult on Vulcan could be a compliment veiled in an insult—or vice versa— for them and they understood with perfect clarity. This had been an issue for her on Mars Colony, when Taurik had been stationed at Utopia Planitia. She had found it difficult to adapt to a largely Human culture. The Martian countryside had been a lot like home, but the people… Loud, obnoxious, impulsive, arrogant, illogical. Taurik, however, had seemed to be in his element, and though she loved him with all of her soul he remained as mysterious as the Humans be loved. His best friend was Human. His commanders were Human. 

L’Del did not know how he could stand it and had risen long before most of the Colony was awake, spent most of the midday in their suite of quarters, and then ventured out again late at night. 

Taurik had been patient and kept to her schedule as much as he had been able when not on duty. He had lain next to her in bed at night, tracing his fingertips over her hip and growing belly, letting her find catharsis in a long litany of complaint and hardship before her ire was spent and she felt absolved of all stressors. It had felt a lot like meditation, only spoken out loud and with her husband’s caresses warm on her skin.

Her own family had been of the rigid, traditional line of Vulcans who recited clan and lineage with subdued relish. L’Dia and Sol had been an ill match in personality but alike in temperament: cool, passive-aggressive. Her father had been a gentle, if distracted, presence in her life. Her mother had been brusque and punitive, honor and appearance taking importance over compassion for her daughter. 

There had been no other children. 

L’Del had looked on her marriage to Taurik with quiet resignation, finding herself fortunate that as a Starfleet officer he would spend much of his time off-planet. She met him at their Bonding day and was pleasantly surprised at the man he had become: focused, curious, driven, kind and compassionate. He had a quick wit. Invited his best friend, Sam, to the ceremony. L’Del had been touched by this, to know that Taurik was well-liked and had friends.

She had been gratified to learn that Taurik was her friend also, not just her husband.

However, whereas she once took comfort in his frequent removal from Vulcan she now found her position reversed; she wished Taurik home more often. She wished him more like her, centered around home and hearth and concert hall. His dry sense of humor and quick wit seemed more accentuated with each passing year, his mannerisms more Human. 

She began to wonder if he preferred them over her. 

“Ah, this place is beautiful,” Liv was saying, watching the orange sunset light burning in the red sandstone cliffs, making them appear ruby.

L’Del noticed that she had a strange catch in her throat and a curl for certain consonants that appeared whenever she was getting tired. Or angry. Taurik had said that she was from some place called Edin’burra.

They had come to the edge of the amphitheatre, which yawned below them with a semi-circle of stone steps wide enough for sitting looking over a central space that had once contained a stage of dune-cedar planks, now long gone and filled in with a few meters of drifted sand and soil. A smaller niche had been carved centrally into the natural curve of the cliff, which would have amplified the screams that came from above the basin of white stone within. 

“Shi’fitor,” L’Del nodded over the vast space. “That is its original name. In later centuries there was a long curtain of cloth hung up to cover that niche, and plays and operas were performed here.” She gestured down at the basin with a vague wave of her hand and hoped that Liv wouldn’t go down to it. The interior of the bowl glowed deep green in the low light as if enameled. 

Liv walked down to it with L’Del close behind. Of course. The Human jumped up onto the stone dais and leaned on the basin to examine it with a clearer view.

“It is a beautiful color,” Liv said, peering close and running her finger across the basin. “Almost like—” Here she drew back fast enough that her braids swung and beads clicked, her mouth twisted in a moue of disgust. 

“That is a plak’vikh, a bloodwell,” L’Del said, keeping her voice as neutral as possible as her sister-in-law wiped her hand on her thigh. “A place of execution that gives the place its name. The ‘beautiful color’ of the basin is oxidation of blood that was almost constantly replenished through execution and sacrifice. After a time, the stone absorbed so much copper-based hemoglobin that it became indelible. Different from the souvenir blood-stones. Those came later. At the time that this amphitheatre was built it was customary for the victorious Clan to bathe in the blood.”

Liv tilted her head, considering the basin with her hands folded behind her back looking like a small child told not to touch in a store full of breakables. 

L’Del walked away under pretense of looking at a cascade of v’minnet vines at the end of their flowering season, the fuchsia petals curling at the edges in the heat and half of the peduncles bearing hips full of ripening seeds. How could a Human have a Vulcan for a husband and not know so much about his planet? She tried to bring her rising frustration under control, breathed in a brief vree’lat meditation. 

Thought of Surak: “Nar-tor pulaya s'au k'ka'es; k'el'rular tun-bosh.” Accept their reaching in the same way, with careful hands.

At least Liv was taking an interest in their culture and had exhibited respect in her handling of the silver pendant. At least there was that. 

The light was beginning to fail, so they climbed up the amphitheatre steps and stood in the warm night wind that curled around them. The sky glowed inky blue to the east with T’Kuhl dark in wane, the line of western sky a dusky rose-gold. Several bright satellites circled the planet: the spacedock, a few starships, the  _ Enterprise-E _ among them. 

Liv turned her face into the sweet wind, her red-blonde hair dancing, face composed. L’Del was beginning to grow accustomed to the Human’s expressions. She had to admit that they were more subtle than that of Sam Lavelle’s and Aisha Bilal’s, which was fortunate. A smile seemed as alarming as a grimace, a frown was as severe as harsh rebuke. Human laughter seemed to her to be a reeling, chiming call of madness. 

“Mum!” Talys called, running up to L’Del with a child’s immodest love. Crashed into her mother and clung to her skirts, talking at warp five about her climb through the crux. “Eh nash-vah ki’tevan-tor wuh’vak!”

“Wonderful, baby,” L’Del said in her home dialect and caressed Talys’s cheek, watched her run to her aunt to brag about the climb. Here her movements were more sedate, more disciplined and Vulcan. Liv responded in kind, kneeling, listening with respectful silence. She patiently unwove and rebraided Talys’s long black hair at the girl’s request while Taurik and Vorik restowed their gear. 

Later that evening, she and Vorik led Talys down to the creek before bed to allow L’Del and Taurik some time alone together. They remained away for a discreet hour, coming back and making a lot of noise to alert their presence. Liv had taught Talys a call-and-response camp song, and they sang to one another with full-throated volume that sent echoes up and down the canyon.   
  


***

Later, with Talys sung to and tucked into bed, they gathered around the campfire and L’Del played her cedar flute. The song was a crying, melancholy sound that was actually a musical arrangement based on an epic poem about defeat in battle and loss of home. Fitting for the location, with the ruins of the ancient city less than half a kilometer away. Taurik, accustomed to moving silently alongside his wife’s music, prepared a kettle of water for tea and sat at her feet, holding onto her ankle as she played. 

They curled up next to each other on the blanket once she had cleaned her flute and put it in its travel box. L’Del kept a hand on Taurik’s thigh, watched the stars. Frowned a little, when he looked up and pointed out the  _ Enterprise _ sliding along in silent orbit, like a raptor circling its prey.

“How was your tour of Zer’hir?” Taurik asked Liv, handing her a camp mug filled with hot sbah‘tei. A curl of steam looped from his wrist to hers. 

“Unsettling.” Liv smiled, but her expression remained tight across her eyes. “I got to see a plak’vikh and a pendant meant for a plak’kov. A lot of blood-words. Cheerful place, that.”

“In many ways Vulcan’s history is a lot bloodier than yours.” Taurik added another stick of dry wood to the fire, which snapped and sparked.

“I know. Ki’fai-tor nash-vah Rihannsu'lar.” Liv poked the smoking branch with a green one. Her expression was dark. Vorik lay a hand on the small of her back. 

L’Del tilted her head as her implanted universal translator spoke her own doubled language back at her: I have known Romulans. Liv didn’t elaborate, and L’Del surmised that her sister-in-law’s reference was part of the Starfleet shorthand, for Taurik and Vorik both nodded once in sympathy. Changed the subject. Taurik asked about the rebuild of  _ Voyager’s _ subspace sensor systems and Vorik launched into an elaborate explanation that left her head buzzing. Liv nodded along and twice interjected a technological point that Vorik had glossed over. 

There it was again, the feeling of being left out of Taurik’s life, of being left behind.

“You assisted in the plasma venting?” Taurik asked, as Liv described an incident that had happened aboard  _ Voyager _ while they were still in Delta. 

“Yes. Most of the crew learned rudimentary tasks common to other departments,” Liv said. “Nothing too technical, but enough to help if there was a crisis.”

“Jack of all trades, master of none,” Vorik said, and here both Liv and Taurik smiled at some private reference that L’Del could not follow. 

She glanced back at the tent where Talys slept.

“We shall be more quiet, Adun’a,” Taurik said, noticing. Raised his eyes at his brother and sister-in-law with eyes sparkling with a mischievous sort of quiet humor. “Heard any good ghost stories lately?”

Liv and Vorik both kindled at this, leaned forward in anticipation. L’Del gave her husband an alarmed glance, subtle though it was. He took her hand but did not relent, explaining “ghost stories” as a campfire-side Human tradition, one which Sam had introduced to him and he found cathartic. 

“Are the nearby ruins of Zer’hir not enough?” L’Del asked, primly addressing her boots down by the fire ring. 

Taurik’s expression twisted in a subtle expression of annoyance. “I understand if you do not like the darker stories, but my brother, sister, and I enjoy them. If you wish to retire to our tent we shall remain and keep our voices down.”

L’Del glanced around the campfire, noting Vorik and Liv trying to appear interested in other things: the waning flames, the dance of shadows on cliffs from the trees overhead, a swoop of night-raptor wings. She set her jaw and bid them goodnight, tired of the day, the heat, the company. They were polite enough, Liv saying she looked forward to the next day, when they would spend more time at the river.

The tent was cool and dim, Talys stirring in her bedroll long enough to identify L’Del as her mother before falling asleep again with her mouth open on the pillow over a growing spot of drool. So much like her father. L’Del stripped to her undergarment, mindful of the smell of woodsmoke on her clothes. Pulled on one of Taurik’s tunics for a nightgown, dark grey, smelling like him. Hours later he climbed in next to her, slipped his hand up inside the hem and played with her breasts, her belly, her thighs. Drew her out of the tent and down the path to the pool, where he picked her up and placed her on one of the boulders, made love to her again in a silent sort of apology. 

She accepted.


	5. Hearth

V.

The next morning dawned dry and hot even before the sun was in the sky. A good day for the creek. L’Del lay on her bedroll and listened to her husband and daughter murmuring over the fit of the girl’s swimsuit. She was fast outgrowing it and was arguing the points of logic for ordering the same suit in a different size, summing up with “...in conclusion, An’an, Sacred Artemis is a good role model; she punches only bad people.”

Taurik, for his part, listened to every illogical point as though they made sense and conceded that yes, the same swimsuit would indeed be the best idea. Once they got back home, as he had explained. Now, would she please, _please_ get into her shorts and t-shirt as substitute swimwear; the strap on her suit was beyond repair and Uncle and Aunt were already ready.

“Damn,” Vorik’s voice drifted from the direction of the fire-ring. 

“Om’toisu,” Liv’s fond voice. “You are supposed to drink your tea, not wear it.”

Again, an insult meant as a term of affection. L'Del found it baffling.

Talys giggled and singsonged “soggy shirt.”

The tent door parted and Taurik crawled in to greet L’Del with a kiss over the pulse point in her throat. He pulled a rust-red tunic from his pack and explained that they were for the river path. “Please follow when you are ready, my wife.” 

The tent door closed and Taurik’s shadow rose, tossed the tunic at his brother. “Here, Vorik. It might fit you.”

That Human humor. Again. And Talys seemed to be catching it. L’Del allowed herself a sigh. Lay there for a long while in blessed solitude, rose, meditated, made a lazy breakfast. Hiked out on her own as the lara birds sang courting songs to one another.

She strolled down the wash, looking forward to the cool green water on her legs, Taurik with Talys in his arms as he swished her through the current, the sparkle of sunlight on water. Just as she drew past a thin ribbon of slot canyon she heard Liv’s subdued voice, a deep-voiced murmur, a soft moan of pleasure from a Vulcan male. L’Del froze, backtracked. She pressed into the canyon, turning sideways when it narrowed. A dangerous passage in monsoon season, but no storms had been forecast and the weather alarm back at camp had remained silent. She pushed past a final turn and into a small grotto where a single, spindly prak’it tree swayed in shadow.

L’Del stopped short at what she saw and ducked behind the outcrop with her heart pounding in her side and bile sour in her throat. The Human woman had her rose-pink skirts hiked up, sitting on a boulder with her legs wrapped around Taurik, her thighs pressed to his hips. He had been standing with his trousers down around his knees, rust-red tunic cast on the sand, hips working into her—

She pushed away from the outcrop and around the bend, furious, embracing the blind rage that sang in her blood. “Kroykah!” she barked, eyes gleaming with an intent to tear that lunikkh ta’vik, that poisoner of wells off of her husband.

Liv and Taurik froze, her husband trying to cover up his sister-in-law with his hands as she clutched at his shoulders and—L’Del set eyes on the small of his back. No green birthmark over his spine, no pattern of old Dominion phaser scars pale against his skin. There was, however, a thin green scar across his left scapula. _Not_ Taurik. _Vorik_ _._ He and Liv looked at L’Del with identical expressions of confusion, hurt, rising anger.

“What in the hell?” Liv growled, Edinburgh burr suddenly high in her throat. Her grey eyes burned with a pale-flame fury that was unnerving to L’Del, accustomed to the dark eyes of her own people. “ _Not_ nice.”

“Hafa’uh!” Vorik snapped over his shoulder at L’Del in commandment to stay in place and reached behind his wife to gather her turquoise shawl up to cover them both. “Po’k nash’ a’fikh?”

L’Del, her blood high in her cheeks with shame, backed away with apology on her lips. “Ni’droi’ik’ nash-tor.” Dropped her eyes, withdrew from the tiny grotto. Alarmed inquiry from Taurik came along their Bond and she clasped her arms about her belly, walked back to the camp with her mouth dry and head buzzing. 

She cast herself onto the sleeping roll in their tent, grateful for the pool of shade and trickle of water pattering from the seep high above. For extra measure she pulled Talys’s red silk shawl over her face and moaned into her palm. Nirak, fool, duhsu, idiot. She again ignored the telepathic inquiry from her husband, sent a frantic insistence that everything was fine, she was physically safe, had only been afraid without cause. 

Managed to keep the burn of shame from him. Maybe. 

A balm of his calm centeredness caressed her mind as he attempted to draw her back to the center of herself. Shame caused her to reject this gesture of love. His hurt and compassion echoed back, withdrew, ceased. He was giving her privacy. 

An hour later she heard a soft step across the camp and the tent door parted. Taurik. His expression was grave, wide mouth set in a grim line. He knelt and regarded her in silence for a long time while bunched in on himself, arms hugging one knee. He would not touch her.

L’Del turned her face to the other wall of the tent. Closed her eyes. Their Bond radiated with his anger, her shame.

“Why?” He asked, not needing to elaborate. An echo of what she had seen and the insinuation of her jealousy came through the Bond. 

“I do not know.” Misery rasped in her voice.

“Have I ever given you reason to doubt my loyalty?” His voice was deadly calm.

“No.”

“Then why?”

Silence stretched, long and thin like a blade. 

“You suspected my sister of desiring me?”

“Yes.”

“On what evidence?” Here his voice sharpened, and their link flared with a deeper anger.

“She loves you.”

“Yes, she does. As a sibling. I have never felt more from her than that. Never once. And she has ever felt only the same from me.”

L’Del nodded. Trusting him. Again the silence, sharp against her skin. 

Taurik sighed and his weight lay out beside her. Fatigue and resignation in the sound. 

“Where are they?” she asked.

“At the creek. Cooling their embarrassment. Talys is good for that.”

“They hate me.”

“No. They think you foolish.”

Somehow this was worse.

His fingertips traced the nape of her neck. She wanted to cry at the tenderness of the caress. An inquiry. She turned to him and placed her fingers over the psi-points on his face and he did the same for her.

_??L’Del?_

_Because I lack._

_???_

_I lack you, I lack the stars and open space. I lack adventure. I have only Talys and my flute and an empty house. I cannot share what you three—TaurikVorikLiv—have._

_I see you._

_I know._

Grief swelled between them, the grief of parting and distance.

_Are we too incompatible, my husband?_

_No. We are strong together._

_We are seldom together._

_I know._

_Is there an answer to this? For us?_

_I do not know._

_Would you leave Starfleet?_

_...No._

Here her grief and anger assailed him, and Taurik’s face bunched with her pain. He closed his eyes and tasted bitter salt. 

_I sorrow with you, L’Del. This is who I am. I have been working toward the stars my whole life; to ask me to remain planet-bound is to ask me to give up the best part of me._

_What of me? Talys?_

_I see you both as separate and wonderful beings of your own. We are a part of each other, but we are also wholly ourselves. We complement, not complete one another._

_You complete me._

_No, I do not. You are already complete in yourself, L’Del._

She scoffed, rejecting for a moment what he tried to show her in the meld, then relented, sought to understand.

Their house, their home, Talys with her hands covered in swirls of paint, smoke rising from a cone of v’lil incense, rolling through the air with music from her cedar flute. Falls of violet-colored cloth, the swirl of her dress, the copper skin of her thighs and throat, her voice curling in his ear as they made love, her hands skimming up his back. Her hands patting flour over a river of honey, rolling dough and baking bread, bowls of fruit and water, petals from the svai-tor trillek plants on their hillside blowing across the stones and her bare feet. Talys, standing on tiptoe with her long black hair dancing on the wind.

_You make me feel at home, L’Del. You have value; value is not only found exploring among the stars. It is also found around the hearth. We are parted but never parted, never and always touching and touched._

_I understand, my Adun._

She showed him what he meant to her, a man standing alone in the dark with stars falling from his fingers, caught in his hair like dew. Holding the throb and pulse of a starship engine in the palm of his hand, the blue light beating like a heart. The scent of cool, clean air on a summer night and the wheel of dark sky overhead, the blush of nebulae, the scatter of ice from a comet caressing his skin as delicately as she would with her own fingertips.

_Taluhk nash-veh k'dular._

They lay for a long while after their meld dissipated, caressing one another, coming down off of the telepathic high that such joining brought them. In a good marriage, this was considered a place of refuge and acceptance, where empathy traced through all thoughts and concepts. _This is something Humans do not know_ , L’Del thought, _unless they wed a Vulcan. How lonely they are._

“Or a Betazoid or a Tuulahn or a Tolorixian,” Taurik murmured against her hair. “I do not know of a person who is non-telepathic wedding a Kzinti, however.”

“Forgive me, my husband. I shall endeavor to shield my thoughts a little better.” She kissed his palm.

“Please do not. This time together is rare enough. Please do not hold back from me.” His sorrow moved through her, tasting of sweet water and spent blossoms. 

She sighed, tasting his scent on her tongue. “You know so much more about the galaxy than I do.”

“Only by virtue of my experiences,” Taurik said. Fighting sleep, by the sound of his voice. No matter if he did start to drowse; they were approaching the hottest part of the day, when most of Vulcan shut down for a three-hour afternoon siesta, the pen‘shom. “When I first went to the Academy I felt so out of my element that I considered returning home during my sophomore year.”

L’Del raised her eyebrows, the surprise reaching him through their Bond. “I did not know this.”

“No one did, until just now.” He stretched, rousing from the seductive pull of a nap. “I did not tell anyone, even Vorik. My classes were going well. I ‘aced’ every exam and subject, but whereas my academic prowess was promising, my inborn reservation was making life difficult for me. In spite of two close friends I felt out of my element, naked even, when away from them, the classroom, or my brother. Tu’as-kba, that feeling of vulnerability made me doubt myself. I filled out the withdrawal paperwork but did not submit it.”

“What caused you to change your mind?”

“Now what. Who. Sam Lavelle. This is part of the reason why I named him t’hi’ha—um, t’hy’la. Forgive me; I begin to slip out of your dialect when I am fatigued.” Here he sat up and curled into a cross-legged position with such grace that he reminded L’Del of a soaring ha’nuin bird. 

“Sam came back to our dorm room in a bad moment, just when I was going to submit my letter of resignation. Humans seem to have an uncanny ‘sixth sense,’ as they call it, when someone whom they care about is in need. He was supposed to be on a shuttle for a weekend at Mars Colony, with his mother, but he came to invite me along, instead. In Human culture, such coincidence of events is called a ‘sign’ that something is not meant to be, so I put my letter back in the draft queue and went with him.

“When we went to his mother’s residence I was half dazed with an illogical sense of anxiety and am afraid that I made a poor guest for the first few hours we were there. I barely spoke. This was my first time meeting Sam’s mother, Geneviève, and I gave her a middling first impression.”

L’Del liked the woman’s name, pronounced in French with the soft J-sound. A name like a whispered imperative.

“She and Sam seemed to understand what he called my ‘headspace.’ Instead of going out to the Deimos Festival as they had planned, they stayed home and involved me in family activities. Geneviève taught me how to make a vegetarian tourtiere and split-pea soup, which are traditional dishes of Quebec, where her father was from. Sam piled some of his favorite books from adolescence on the guest bed for me to read that night. I liked _The Shipping News_ and _Under the Sign of Leo_ the most.”

“You have these books in the library at home.”

“Yes. Have you read them?”

“No.” L’Del preferred the works of T’Shra and Vre, both of the Kir region. 

“I recommend it, if you want to gain experience without leaving home. Reading off-world literature is the next best thing.” Taurik tilted his head at the sound of Vorik and Liv’s paired voices approaching the camp. No Talys. He rolled to peer out between the closed tent door, saw his brother carrying the little girl, who was sound asleep. He lay her down on the yellow blanket, spread in deep shade beneath the overhanging trees. Liv murmured something and they walked down the path to the pool, out of sight. “You need to talk to them.”

L’Del sat and combed her sleek black hair back through her fingers. “I know. I already apologized, but it was in the moment when…” She left the words hanging and tried not to remember what she had seen. 

“Come with me.” Taurik rose to his knees and put his hand out to assist her from the tent. Unnecessary, but she enjoyed the feeling of his calloused palm in hers, the hard tips of his fingers strong from working with his hands in Engineering. They felt lovely when he caressed her body, the psi-points accentuated by the roughness, rather than dulled. 

She walked alongside Taurik with her head down, watching her bare feet on the sandy path, blessedly cool with shade. The air smelled of baking grasses, hot stone, something almost sickly sweet and dead curling on the end of a breeze. Death found the weak and the ill in heat like this. Taurik did not seem to notice.

The paired voices of Vorik and Liv found them first through the trees. 

Vorik, a Raalian curl to his voice. “...then Ensign Vakara asked Paris ‘Are we playing One of Everything or are we playing As Many Rooms as You Can?’”

Liv’s soft giggle. “What did you do?”

“Kept my head down and eavesdropped. Until Vakara threw one of the decorative vases.”

“You’re a terrible judge of character, Ricky.”

Vorik’s laugh was sweet and uninhibited, traces of it remaining in his eyes as L’Del and Taurik pushed past the final screen of scrub hardwood, the deep green leaves glossy with late summer sap. Her brother-in-law was sitting cross legged on a boulder above the pond, hands in his lap, fully at ease. Liv stood in the water, holding her soft pink skirts up to her knees, her eyes closed. Swaying, sleepy, hair down and dancing on the wind. 

She glanced across her shoulder and gazed directly at L’Del with an expression that shifted into the inscrutable. For all that Humans were an openly emotional species they could be hard to understand, at times. Their faces could go as unnervingly blank as a Vulcan in kash’kolaya, telepathic shock, but without damage being done. The only clue to her current state of mind were the tiny shifts in expression around her grey eyes. L’Del was reminded of quicksilver, mercury rolling and poisonous and untouchable.

Then Liv smiled, her eyes warm, a touch sheepish. 

“Hi,” she said. Tone friendly. “Come in?”

L’Del lifted her own light blue skirts and stepped into the water, watching the ripples spread from her narrow feet. Tadpole-like kerr and a few ancient-looking ma’guat flitted and swam away, darted behind stones or buried under sediment. Taurik climbed up after his brother, sighed and lay back on the boulder. The air was cool near the pond, the seep above dripping cool water on hot skin, the lara birds twittering in the afternoon lull. L’Del wished she had her flute, but standing in the mirror-like water was enough. Liv gave her another small smile, a wink that L’Del guessed was meant to be encouraging, and closed her eyes again.

Silent, still, like a water-goddess from Vulcan legends passed down from long ago: Fletan, Natara'kai, M'Sharis.

L'Del meditated upon these images and closed her own eyes, considering. She had a difficult time meeting Liv as a person, for the words "Human" and "Starfleet officer" kept getting in the way and making connection difficult. She had to admit that for her part, Liv did seem open-minded, had honored tradition at Zer'hir, was unafraid to ask questions when she reached the limits of her knowledge. Liv had asked Vorik about the concept of the ka'ta-pak, the chorus of emotions within a person that must be mastered. Other thoughtful questions had followed across the campfire, along with silent rumination during which Liv did not pass judgement. This was the strength of being a member of Starfleet, L'Del supposed. Change and concept and difference uniting to form a whole, like the Vulcan concept of Kol-Ut-Shan, what translated into "infinite diversity in infinite combinations." This acceptance of difference was a muscle that Taurik had learned to flex, being surrounded as he was by myriads of people with myriads of custom.

It was part of what made him attractive to her, the way he brought the galaxy to her doorstep by the way of subspace communications, holo photos, gifts from dozens of different worlds, such as orchids, musical instruments, a data rod with a collection of love poems from Betazed. She admitted to herself that she envied his ability to live off-world, nomadic, exploring the galaxy and inured to most danger, even if she never wanted that life for herself and something with which she would have to continue to reconcile. Plus, Taurik's homecomings always kept their marriage... interesting.

Talys wandered to the pool after a while, her inborn self-sufficiency rendering her unafraid to wake alone in the camp and follow the voices of her people. L'Del watched her daughter wade out to her aunt after a brief stop to burrow into her mother's skirts. The little girl and Human woman stood hand in hand, eyes closed, listening to the soft sound of water pattering onto the rocks and pond, the soft murmurs of Taurik and Vorik speaking up on the boulders above. L'Del waded into the center and took Talys's other hand, her baby smiling as she stood between the two women. L'Del likewise closed her eyes and smelled the baking trees, alkali, the cool ache of water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Shipping News, by E. Annie Proulx, is my favorite novel and comes highly recommended. Word of God is that Jake Sisko wrote Under the Sign of Leo, a collection of short stories based on The Battle of Wolf 359, in which he lost his mother.


End file.
